On a routine flight across the Pacific a Norton N-22 airliner operated by Hong Kong charter company TransPacific Airlines encounters what the pilot describes as "severe turbulence". The plane makes an emergency landing in Los Angeles with three people dead, dozens more injured, and the interior of the plane in tatters. The plane's manufacturer, Norton Aircraft, follows usual procedure by convening its Incident Response Team to try and determine what happened to TPA 545: was it a design flaw, mechanical failure, or human error?
The incident has happened at the worst possible time. Norton Aircraft is about to close an $8 billion deal with the Chinese government to purchase at least 50 N-22 jets. The sale will save the company from its current financial stagnation but hinges on the near perfect safety record of the N-22 design. The CEO of Norton is flying to Beijing in a week to sign the deal, if the IRT doesn't have an explanation by then the Chinese are guaranteed to call off the sale and the company is as good as dead.
It falls to Honest Corporate Executive Casey Singleton, a newly promoted Vice President of Quality Assurance and member of the IRT, to find out what happened while preserving the name and reputation of the company. The search for the truth is further complicated as a sensationalist Prime Time News show begins to get wind of what happened and starts nosing around.
Airframe contains examples of:
- Ace Pilot:
- Captain John Chang, the pilot of the flight, had logged over 6000 hours of flight experience and had just been evaluated as "Outstanding" by Norton's own simulators three months prior... So how this could have happened while he was flying is one of the central questions of the investigation. Turns out he wasn't flying the plane at all.
- Norton test pilot Ted Rawley, considering that part of his job involves re-creating the incident to confirm the IRT's hypothesis.
- Asshole Victim: Bob Richman gets arrested for drug charges in Singapore and is implied to face the death penalty.
- AstroTurf: The Institute for Aviation Research, despite its academic sounding name, is a PR firm working for Airbus. They put out frequent news releases attacking the N-22's safety record since Airbus is vying for the China contract against Norton.
- Audience Surrogate: Many of the early infodumps take the form of Casey explaining some aspect of aircraft design or engineering to Richman.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Malone demands to be on the plane when Norton recreates the incident. She winds up regretting it.
- Being Good Sucks: Casey is feeling this way toward the end of the book. She's been trying to do the right thing throughout and all she has to show for her efforts are a couple of videos showing the terrifying ride, she's being hounded by reporters who sense blood in the water, and it turns out she's been set up to take the fall if the plane is discredited.
- Beware the Quiet Ones: Casey is generally level-headed and no-nonsense, but she takes a certain amount of pleasure watching Malone's terror while they are recreating the incident.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Marder and Richman.
- Brand X: Norton Aircraft is a fictional fourth widebody aircraft manufacturer that competes with Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and Airbus. McDonnell Douglas ended up merging with Boeing only a year after the book's initial publication.
- Coming in Hot: The pilot requests a total of forty ambulances to meet them on the ground.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Amidst all the bad press, Marder and Richman are conspiring to make a deal with Korea that's over twice the size of Edgarton's deal with China—as well as everything they need to manufacture their own wings for the airframes: a sixteen billion-dollar deal that will put Norton's stock through the roof, Edgarton on his ass, Marder in Edgarton's post, and, as Casey points out to Richman, the whole company in the toilet because wing designs are the lifeblood of any aircraft manufacturer. Thankfully, some quick thinking on her part foils their scheme.
- Death in the Clouds: Three, later four, to be precise.
- Double-Meaning Title: Airframe is the technical term for the physical structure of an aircraft, and also alludes to Marder and Richman's plan to have Casey take the fall for ruining the China sale.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Casey is promoted to the head of media relations at Norton after the events of the novel.
- Film at 11: Casey name drops this trope as the reason the public remember some aircraft accidents but not others. She points out 25 incidents occured the previous year that resulted in substantial damage to an airframe, most of them occured overseas and killed hundreds of people, but the only accident people remember was a minor one in Atlanta."A DC-9 in Atlanta. How many people were killed? None. How many were injured? None. Why do you remember it? Because there was film at eleven."
- Guile Hero: Casey turns out to be one.
- Hide Your Children: With all of the dramatic happenings and threats Casey is facing, it's a good thing that this happens to be the week Casey's ex-husband has custody of their daughter.
- Honest Corporate Executive: Unlike Marder and Richman, Casey cares about Norton's employees and the future of the company. Even though the Korea deal to offset the wing will be worth billions and she would probably greatly benefit from stock options or bonuses, she also knows it would kill the company.
- Improbable Piloting Skills: Everyone is amazed that the pilot is able to land the plane after what it went through. This turns out to be a key clue in what really happened: the pilot's son, himself a pilot, took over for his father when he went to take a coffee break, and proceeded to cause the disaster by over-correcting an altitude warning, thanks to his inexperience with the plane. Eventually the son passed out and the plane's autopilot finally took over, enabling the crew to land the plane safely.
- Intrepid Reporter: Marty Reardon projects this image, but it's actually his producer, Jennifer Malone, who finds the stories and does the investigating.
- Is That a Threat?: Brull, the plant's union representative, says that emotions are running hot on the shop floor with concerns over the China sale and "he'd hate to see anything happen" to Casey so he suggests she take a week off. Casey asks if he's threatening her but he insists he's trying to warn her.
- Karma Houdini: Malone's boss ends the story with no setbacks aside from another baby panda story, even getting a humanitarian award.
- Manipulative Bastard: Marder wants to sabotage the China deal and is setting Casey up to take the fall by leaking to the media. The failure of the China sale will be blamed on Casey mishandling the IRT, Edgarton will be fired as CEO, and Marder will then swoop in to present the bigger deal he's secretly arranged with Korea.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Richman is from one of the lesser branches of the Norton family and initially comes off as a clueless trust fund kid, but he's actually in on Marder's scheme to take over the company.
- Oceanic Airlines: TransPacific Airlines.
- Prime Time News: Newsline is a fictional example.
- Race Against the Clock: The IRT only has one week to determine what happened to TPA 545 because that's when Norton's CEO is flying to China to close the sale. Several characters object to this because IRT investigations normally take at least a month.
- The Reveal: The accident was actually caused by the Captain's son who, although a licensed commercial airliner pilot, was not qualified for the N-22. When a simple problem occurred, that would have been covered by Norton's training, he panicked and turned a simple situation into a disaster.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The cause of the accident is loosely based on a real life incident involving a Chinese airliner
with some elements of an unfortunately fatal Russian crash. Tellingly, given that Crichton relied on McDonnell Douglas for his research, the slats problem and accidental slat lever movement involved with the fictional N-22 is identical to that suffered by the real-life MD-11. - Run for the Border: Most of the TPA 545 crew (including the flight deck crew) immediately caught the next TPA flight leaving LAX, making them unavailable for questioning by the IRT. TPA's representative defends the crew by saying they legally did nothing wrong and are, in fact, doing the responsible thing by returning to Hong Kong to face any civil or criminal liability.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Marder, with his hopes for ousting Hal Edgarton as president of Norton in shreds, leaves the company to take a consulting job before Edgarton can fire him.
- Smug Snake: Once Casey confronts Richman, he quickly reveals himself to be this.
- Take That!: One of the engineers is described as a temperamental, grumpy, elitist manchild... which, the narration notes, is true of many engineers.
- Yet Another Baby Panda: Malone's boss is eager to get the Norton story so he doesn't get stuck with one of these. He does anyway, much to his anger, and Malone ends up leaving her job at Newsline under less-than-ideal circumstances because of it.
